Author Archives: Beverly Ford

In my last post, I talked about the connection between decomposing numbers and place value. Understanding how numbers can be decomposed into parts lays the foundation for breaking apart numbers into specific groups. These specific groups could be anything, but for our numeration system they will be ten. You may want to check out the… Continue Reading

Field Testing Experience During my recent field-testing in Kindergarten, students worked with different pictures of teddy bear counters and with five frames. I would give the students a picture and they would build the picture in their five frame, then fill in their sentence frames and read them. They did a great job! They were… Continue Reading

As I talked about in my earlier posts, I am really interested in learning about the Japanese methods of teaching math concepts. As I was exploring a 1st grade Japanese textbook that Phil Daro recommended, I noticed something I wanted to field test. The textbook had the students placing counters on top of the pictures… Continue Reading

As a student, I received good grades and loved following all the procedures. As a teacher and coach, I wanted all students to be successful: the students needed to be able to understand, not just follow the procedures. There are only a small percentage of us that only follow rules and are successful. I have… Continue Reading